List and Ask

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Posted By: Jim Dale

Just curious; do any of you put items on eBay BIN at silly high prices? I'm not condemning the practice just curious - it must work because its done. A card I coveted has an SMR of $300, comparable sales of $250/300 in recent months, and there is a seller with one on ebay right now at $1000. I'm not going to pay that but probably would pay $300. So what I am asking, as practice, if you do this and list cards for such prices to you get annoyed at $300 offers?

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Posted By: jeffdrum

has been with a few exceptions (Sellers who are running a BIN Museum), most are looking for a fish but are open to a reasonable offer.

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Posted By: Darren

My experience has been similar to Jeff's. Offering the fair market value is a good practice.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

I just bought a T206 HOF porrait with a BIN that stated any offers at 90% would be accepted. I went down another 15% and submitted it as a best offer. I got no response so I tried another offer at only 10% off (or a total of 20%) of the "reduced" BIN price and it was accepted. Not a crazy BIN price to start with but it was high enough a reduction was warranted (and accepted once I got a reasonable offer in). Sometimes you just need to find the sweet spot.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

I recently sold a high four figure card with BIN and received an offer at almost the BIN price. It was the fair value for the card and I wanted to sell it -- hence me being fair in the price I listed. Too often I see people buy a card off either ebay or the BST for prices that are easily verified online -- and then a few days later put it out on ebay with a BIN of double the price. Or more. I guess the point is to hope that there is someone out there that is an idiot, but nearly all the time the overpriced card never sells at that price. I suppose the motivation to put it out there at a fair market price is to sell the card whereas to try to hit a homerun in 24 hours turnaround time is just an effort for a windfall without a real intention to sell the card.

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Posted By: Matt

I believe some people list many cards from their personal collection on ebay with super-inflated prices. They figure "if someone wants to pay that much they can have the card, but otherwise I'm not really interested in selling." I wouldn't say the bulk of high BIN prices are due to that, but it probably explains some of it.

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Posted By: Red

If there's a $300 SMR card you want, and you see recent sales of the card at $250 to $300, then why on earth are you trying to buy one that somebody has priced at $1000 for $300. Why not just buy one from somebody selling it for $250 to $300?

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Posted By: Jim Dale

When the next one comes up I would do that; I just didn't wnat to send in an offer of $300 to someone asking a $1,000 even though I have good reason to believe its fair.

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Posted By: Jason L

If you see a $1,000 listing for a $300 (fair value) card, and you want it, what's the harm in submitting a $300 offer?!??!
Go ahead!

Under no circumstances could that offer be construed as any more rude than the ridiculous 3.3x markup being requested!!!

If the seller responds in an uncalled for manner, you can simply respond back in a civil tone with a question as to why he thinks his card is worth more than 3 times the going market price? Who knows, maybe there's a reason....like unique provenance or something of that nature.

"Well, this card is worth $1,000 because it was abducted by aliens, and last owned by JFK."

Never know.

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Posted By: Jeff

This hits the nail exactly on the head. I'm not talking about collectors who put stuff out at 9 times its FMV to see if someone will pay them dearly enough to part with a personal favorite. Its the regular sellers who trot out the same inventory over and over and over, or leave perpetual BINs, at prices that are so vastly in excess of VCP, even SMR, as to make it seem laughable to offer to offer them something along the lines of VCP as a demonstrably fair price when their BIN is twice or three times that much (and these are the sellers without the "OBO" option). I see medium priced pre-war cards being offered repeatedly, over a period of months and months, for prices twice or more what the same card sellers for on eBay, and have been repeatedly rebuffed when making an offer in line with VCP, or even a little more. Don't offer me a $135 card (VCP avg) for $275 in a BIN (and you ALL know who you are) and expect me to go haggle with you to try to convince you to sell it to me at a price you clearly do not want to sell it at -- i.e., FMV (which both you and I can determine objectively). If you want to sell that card, price it within the ballpark of a reasonable price, given what you are offering, where it is offered, and what resources I have as a collector to figure out how much to pay, based on historical evidence of FMV.

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Posted By: Randy Trierweiler

Jeff, well said. I saw a card I wanted with a BIN, a year ago at 100% over FMV. There was no OBO option. I e-mailed and stated if listed at FMV plus 25% I would buy the card right now. The response from the seller was "this card will sell itself, it does not merit a lower price". It's now been re-listed 12 times at the same price. Randy

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Posted By: Matt

"Don't offer me a $135 card (VCP avg) for $275 in a BIN (and you ALL know who you are) and expect me to go haggle with you to try to convince you to sell it to me at a price you clearly do not want to sell it at -- i.e., FMV (which both you and I can determine objectively)."

Jeff - having been down the road of trying to convince overpriced ebay sellers that their asking price was 2X what it should be I can assure you they have no interest in haggling on price with you. I will also add that in every case, where I have tried with a seller, I have been able to buy the same card from someone else below what I offered to the seller; perhaps I should say "thank you."

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Posted By: JimB

I don't bother making an offer to people who make obnoxious mark-ups like that. I just figure they are not serious and it is not worth my time.
JimB

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Posted By: jdrum

You are exactly right, they are essentially renting virtual museum space from ebay.